"The Star-Spangled Banner"[edit]

During the War of 1812, Key, accompanied by the British Prisoner Exchange Agent Colonel John Stuart Skinner, dined aboard the British ship HMS Tonnant, as the guests of three British officers: Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane, Rear Admiral George Cockburn, and Major General Robert Ross. Skinner and Key were there to negotiate the release of prisoners, one of whom was Dr. William Beanes, a resident of Upper Marlboro, Maryland who had been arrested after jailing marauding British troops who were looting local farms. Skinner, Key, and Beanes were not allowed to return to their own sloop because they had become familiar with the strength and position of the British units and with the British intent to attack Baltimore. As a result of this, Key was unable to do anything but watch the bombarding of the American forces at Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore on the night of September 13–14, 1814.[10]

At dawn, Key was able to see an American flag still waving and reported this to the prisoners below deck. Back in Baltimore and inspired, Key wrote a poem about his experience, "Defence of Fort M'Henry", which was soon published in the Patriot on September 20, 1814. He intended to fit it to the rhythms of composer John Stafford Smith's "To Anacreon in Heaven",[10] a popular tune Key had already used as a setting for his 1805 song "When the Warrior Returns," celebrating U.S. heroes of the First Barbary War. (Key used the "star spangled" flag imagery in the earlier song.)[11] It has become better known as "The Star-Spangled Banner". More than a century later, the song was adopted as the American national anthem, first by an Executive Order from President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 (which had little effect beyond requiring military bands to play it) and then by a Congressional resolution in 1931, signed by President Herbert Hoover.

Legal career[edit]

Key was a leading attorney in Frederick, Maryland and Washington, D.C. for many years, with an extensive real estate as well as trial practice. He and his family settled in Georgetown in 1805 or 1806, near the new national capital. There the young Key assisted his uncle, the prominent lawyer Philip Barton Key, including in the sensational conspiracy trial of Aaron Burr and the expulsion of Senator John Smith of Ohio. Key made the first of his many arguments before the United States Supreme Court in 1807. In 1808 Key assisted President Thomas Jefferson's attorney general in United States v. Peters[12]

Slavery[edit]

Key purchased his first enslaved person in 1800 or 1801, and owned six slaves in 1820.[16] Mostly in the 1830s, Key manumitted seven enslaved persons, one of whom (Clem Johnson) continued to work for him for wages as his farm's foreman, supervising several other enslaved persons.[17]

Key throughout his career also represented several slaves seeking their freedom in court (for free), as well as several masters seeking return of their runaway human property.[18][19] Key, Judge William Leigh of Halifax and bishop William Meade were administrators of the will of their friend John Randolph of Roanoke, who died without children and left a will directing his executors to free his more than four hundred slaves. Over the next decade, beginning in 1833, the administrators fought to enforce the will and provide the freed slaves land to support themselves.[20]

Key was considered a decent master, and publicly criticized slavery's cruelties, so much that after his death a newspaper editorial stated "So actively hostile was he to the peculiar institution that he was called 'The Nigger Lawyer' .... because he often volunteered to defend the downtrodden sons and daughters of Africa. Mr. Key convinced me that slavery was wrong--radically wrong."[21]

Key was a founding member and active leader of the American Colonization Society, the primary goal of which was to send free African-Americans back to Africa.[18] However, he was removed from the board in 1833 as its policies shifted toward abolitionist.

Anti-Abolitionist[edit]

A slave-owner himself,[22] Key used his position as U.S. Attorney to suppress abolitionists. In 1833, Key caused a grand jury to indict Benjamin Lundy, editor of the anti-slavery publication, the Genius of Universal Emancipation, and his printer, William Greer, for libel after Lundy published an article that declared, "There is neither mercy nor justice for colored people in this district [of Columbia]". Lundy's article, Key said in the indictment, "was intended to injure, oppress, aggrieve, and vilify the good name, fame, credit & reputation of the Magistrates and constables" of Washington. Lundy left town rather than face trial; Greer was acquitted.[23]

In August 1836, Key agreed to prosecute botanist and doctor Reuben Crandall, brother of controversial Connecticut school teacher Prudence Crandall and who had recently moved to the national capitol. Key secured an indictment for "seditious libel" after two marshalls (who operated as slave catchers in their off hours) found Crandall had a trunk full of anti-slavery publications in his Georgetown residence, five days after a riot caused by rumors that a mentally ill enslaved man had attempted to kill an elderly white woman. In an April 1837 trial that attracted nationwide attention, Key charged that Crandall's actions instigated enslaved people to rebel. Crandall's attorneys acknowledged he opposed slavery, but denied any intent or actions to encourage rebellion. Key, in his final address to the jury said:

"Are you willing, gentlemen, to abandon your country, to permit it to be taken from you, and occupied by the abolitionist, according to whose taste it is to associate and amalgamate with the negro? Or, gentlemen, on the other hand, are there laws in this community to defend you from the immediate abolitionist, who would open upon you the floodgates of such extensive wickedness and mischief?"

This defeat, as well as family tragedies in 1835, diminished Key's political ambition. He resigned as district attorney in 1840. He remained a staunch proponent of African colonization and a strong critic of the antislavery movement until his death.[26]

Religion[edit]

Key was a devout and prominent Episcopalian. In his youth, Key almost became an Episcopal priest rather than a lawyer, and throughout his life he sprinkled biblical references in his correspondence.[27] Key was active in All Saints Parish in Frederick, Maryland, near his family's home, as well as helped found or financially supported several parishes in the new national capital, including St. John's Church in Georgetown, Trinity Church in Washington, D.C. and Christ Church in Alexandria.

From 1818 until his death in 1843, Key was associated with the American Bible Society.[28] Circa 1838, he successfully opposed an abolitionist resolution presented to that group.

Key also helped found two Episcopal seminaries, one in Baltimore, as well as the Virginia Theological Seminary across the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia. Key also published a prose work called The Power of Literature, and Its Connection with Religion in 1834.[3]

The Howard family vault at Saint Paul's Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland.

The Key Monument Association erected a memorial in 1898 and the remains of both Francis Scott Key and his wife, Mary Tayloe Lloyd, were placed in a crypt in the base of the monument.

Despite several efforts to preserve it, the Francis Scott Key residence was ultimately dismantled in 1947. The residence had been located at 3516–18 M Street in Georgetown.[30]

Though Key had written poetry from time to time, often with heavily religious themes, these works were not collected and published until 14 years after his death.[3] Two of Key's religious poems used as Christian hymns include "Before the Lord We Bow" and "Lord, with Glowing Heart I'd Praise Thee".[31]

Monuments and memorials[edit]

Two bridges are named in his honor. The first is the Francis Scott Key Bridge between the Rosslyn section of Arlington County, Virginia, and Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Scott's Georgetown home, which was dismantled in 1947 (as part of construction for the Whitehurst Freeway), was located on M Street NW, in the area between the Key Bridge and the intersection of M Street and Whitehurst Freeway. The location is illustrated on a sign in the Francis Scott Key park.[35]

A monument to Key was commissioned by San Francisco businessman James Lick, who donated some $60,000 for a sculpture of Key to be raised in Golden Gate Park.[37] The travertine monument was executed by sculptor William W. Story in Rome in 1885–87.[37][38] The city of San Francisco recently allocated some $140,000 to renovate the Key monument, which was about to be lost to environmental degradation if repairs weren't made. Repairs were recently finished on the monument located in the music concourse outside the de Young Museum.

^"Assassination of Philip Barton Key, by Daniel E. Sickles of New York". Hartford Daily Courant. March 1, 1959. Retrieved 2010-11-30. "For more than a year there have been floating rumors of improper intimacy between Mr. Key and Mrs. Sickles They have from time to time attended parties, the opera, and rode out together. Mr. Sickles has heard of these reports, but would never credit them until Thursday evening last. On that evening, just as a party was about breaking up at his house, Mr Sickles received among his papers..."

^ ab"Francis Scott Key". New York Times. March 14, 1897. Retrieved 2008-02-17. "Francis Scott Key, the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner," is to have a monument erected to his memory by the citizens of Baltimore, Md., the city in which he died. The monument will be in the form of a bronze statue of heroic size, with a suitable pedestal – the work of Alexander Doyle, a sculptor of this city. ... There is a monument to Key in Golden Gate Park. It was executed by William W. Story ..."

Preservation of the Residence of Francis Scott Key, Special Collections Research Center, Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, The George Washington University. This pamphlet was written by the Columbia Historical Society in an effort to save the Francis Scott Key home from destruction in the 1940s.